Somewhere along the line of Patrol 9, or possibly Patrol 11, aboard USS Michigan SSBN-727(G), I was bored and decided that I was going to read the encyclopedia that we had in the crew’s library, from cover to cover. It led to some interesting on-watch conversations, including a long and probably unnecessary one about the Roman Praetorian Guard.
There is something special about an encyclopedia. I have always loved them. As a kid we had the World Book version which were both great reading AND useful as forts for toy soldiers. I still recall reading an article in them about places to visit, and each time I manage to check one of them off my travel list, I recall sitting in the living room in Denver with that World Book volume and learning about places that were – at that time – just a dream.
There was the evening in Pueblo when over an open volume of the encyclopedia, my dad opened the world of World War II to me with a long and detailed discussion of the Maginot Line AND how to use the Britannica version of the encyclopedia. It is still one of my most precious memories of my father.
When I was promoted to E-6, I wanted to do something special for myself. So… I bought a complete edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was a beautiful set, with a dark blue binding. It came with the Great Books of the Western World and a set of history books about the United States. And for the better part of twenty years, I lugged the entire thing around with me across the country and back. I had a special bookcase built for them.
The day came when my brothers’ kids needed a good resource for school, and they liked to read Uncle Dave’s Britannica. So… they went to my brother, who I believe still has them. The Great Books went to my eldest daughter, an insatiable reader. I went to the online version of Britannica.
It’s still – even today – an important part of my daily study of history. It provides important source materials for this blog and other work that I do. But I do miss those big beautiful hardbacked books that have that special feel to them when they are open in front of me on the desk.
It was March 13, 2012, that Britannica announced that they would no longer publish a printed version of their masterwork. I got it… as Egon once said, “Print is dead.” I don’t believe it, but a set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s is quite an investment. And declining sales meant that the company had to adapt or die.
I have a subscription to Britannica, and I probably always will. But I miss those books.
It’s hard to imagine now, in the era of infinite scrolling and the almighty search engine, but once upon a time, knowledge was bound, printed, and stacked on a shelf, waiting patiently for the curious to seek it out. The Encyclopaedia Britannica was the longest-running in-print English-language encyclopedia, reigning as the king of that realm—a behemoth of learning, a towering reference that promised to deliver the world’s wisdom between hard covers. For centuries, it was the final word in fact-finding, the go-to authority for students, scholars, and anyone looking to settle an argument before the age of Wikipedia and Google. To own a set of Britannica was to declare to the world that you were serious about knowledge, that you valued the pursuit of truth, and, let’s be honest, that you had enough disposable income to buy 32 massive volumes.
The story of Encyclopaedia Britannica is, in many ways, the story of how humans have tried to contain and organize knowledge. Born in the age of the Scottish Enlightenment, this ambitious project started as a three-volume set published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh. It was a bold response to the sprawling, revolutionary Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, which had ruffled feathers in France with its Enlightenment ideals. Unlike its French counterpart, Britannica had no interest in stirring political controversy—it was meant to be practical, factual, and comprehensive, a reliable guide for those who wanted to learn rather than debate. Over the next two and a half centuries, Britannica would evolve from a scholarly work of the 18th century into a staple of middle-class bookshelves, a door-to-door sales phenomenon, and, eventually, a digital relic struggling to find its place in the 21st century.
From its modest Scottish beginnings, Britannica quickly grew into a force in the world of reference materials. By the third edition (1788–1797), it had expanded to 18 volumes and 14,579 pages, and by the 19th century, it was under the control of the Edinburgh publishing firm A & C Black, bringing in heavyweight scholars to write its articles. The 9th edition (1875–1889) became known as the “Scholar’s Edition,” a towering achievement in Victorian intellectualism. This was an era where the names attached to encyclopedia articles were as prestigious as the entries themselves—James Clerk Maxwell, Thomas Huxley, and even a young Lord Kelvin contributed to its pages.
Then came the Americans. In the early 20th century, the ownership of Britannica shifted across the Atlantic, and with it came a shift in tone. No longer the austere, scholarly work of the Victorian age, Britannica was now a product—something to be sold, marketed, and, most importantly, updated frequently. The 11th edition (1911) is still regarded as a literary and scholarly masterpiece, but by the mid-20th century, the encyclopedia had become a cultural institution in American homes, largely thanks to an aggressive sales strategy that turned Britannica into the gold standard of knowledge.
At the height of its dominance, Britannica was a household status symbol. Having a full set of those thick, leather-bound books on the shelf was a sign that you valued education. Parents justified the steep price tag as an investment in their children’s future. But behind the scenes, Britannica was evolving. The 15th edition (first published in 1974) introduced a more structured format, splitting the encyclopedia into the Micropædia (short, fact-based articles), Macropædia (longer, detailed essays), and Propædia (a grand “Outline of Knowledge” intended to organize all human understanding). This was meant to make the encyclopedia more accessible, though it also caused some confusion, leading to a major revision in 1985.
By the late 20th century, Britannica faced a crisis. Sales were falling. The digital age was encroaching. The days of door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen were coming to an end. And then, the real blow: the rise of CD-ROMs and the launch of Microsoft Encarta in the 1990s. For the first time, a digital encyclopedia was available for a fraction of the cost of a Britannica set. Why buy a 32-volume encyclopedia for thousands of dollars when you could get all that information on a shiny little disc?
The digital shift was inevitable. Britannica fought back, launching its own CD-ROM version and, eventually, an online subscription model. But the real killer was Wikipedia. Free, constantly updated, and infinitely expansive, Wikipedia changed the way people interacted with knowledge. No longer was there a need for a gatekeeper of information—anyone with an internet connection could contribute and edit. By 2012, Britannica made the painful but necessary decision to announce the cessation of print editions, with the last print version having been released in 2010. After 244 years in print, the final Encyclopaedia Britannica rolled off the presses, marking the end of an era.
Today, Britannica still exists, but it is a very different beast from the one that once occupied entire bookshelves. The company has rebranded itself as a digital educational resource, offering an online subscription service, classroom tools, and curated content for students and educators. In an age of misinformation and dubious sources, Britannica still touts its authority and credibility as a selling point. But the reality is that it is now just one voice among many in the cacophony of online information.
The legacy of Encyclopaedia Britannica is undeniable. For more than two centuries, it was the pinnacle of human knowledge, undergoing continuous revision from 1933 onward to keep pace with new discoveries, a monument to the belief that learning should be systematic, structured, and, above all, trustworthy. It shaped generations of thinkers, provided inspiration to countless scholars, and, in its own way, democratized knowledge. But the world changed, and Britannica had to change with it. In some ways, its story is a cautionary tale about the limits of tradition in the face of technological disruption. And yet, even as a digital entity, it remains a symbol of a time when knowledge was something you held in your hands—heavy, authoritative, and worth every inch of shelf space it occupied.
DAVE DOES HISTORY 
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